


XVI

by Crowgirl



Series: Welcoming Silences [18]
Category: Foyle's War
Genre: Angst, Internal Conflict, Internal Monologue, M/M, Overthinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 01:51:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4942042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Foyle locks his front door, locks his back door, and takes a cup of tea with him up to his bedroom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	XVI

After Paul leaves that evening, sometime after nine, Foyle locks his front door, locks his back door, and takes a cup of tea with him up to his bedroom. He’s fairly sure he won’t drink it but the routine of making it is soothing. He sets the cup and saucer down by his bedside lamp and lets himself settle onto the mattress. 

He takes one deep breath, then another, listening to the quiet. There isn’t even a wind in the street outside and the warden went by on his rounds some time ago and isn’t due by back for several hours. 

Foyle closes his eyes and holds his breath for a minute, then lets it out in a long sigh. If he had been secretly hoping that a long stretch of time with Paul would reveal some terrible character flaw that would strangle his attraction, he had been deluding himself. He’ll admit that the thought had crossed his mind this morning -- but he’ll also admit that he only entertained it seriously for about ten minutes. They’ve spent far too much time together now for a mere twenty-four hours in one another's company to change his estimation of Paul. 

He can hear the silence of the house around him now and he wants nothing more than for it to be broken by Paul’s voice, or the sound of him downstairs, or -- Foyle glances at the empty space on the bed beside him, sighs, and grinds the heels of his palms into his eyes. He’s been very carefully honest with himself so far and he will not get lazy now. So, yes, he would also like Paul here, now, in this room, moving to block out the rest of the world with a closed door.

It’s been a very long time since anyone but Foyle has been in this bed. The last time had probably been when Andrew had come home early on school vacation and Foyle had been called to London unexpectedly. Andrew’s room hadn’t been made up yet -- he doesn’t remember why now; something to do with repairs to the window -- and this one had. By the time he got home the next day, Andrew had dug out sheets and a duvet and made up his own bed. 

And his son borrowing his space for a night is hardly the same as the thoughts he has now. It wasn’t as though he had consciously decided on a solitary life after Rosalind’s death. It had just -- happened. There had been Andrew and the house and his job and -- other people just hadn’t seemed as important. He hasn’t been a monk but he’s sure other men his age would have had more...more _active_ lives. Perhaps if he had done that -- made a different decision about that pretty secretary at the Met office in London who is always so pleased to see him, for instance -- then Paul simply _being_ there would not strike him so strongly.

But he suspects that’s hindsight talking, inaccurate as hindsight often is.

Foyle sighs again and looks over at the curl of steam rising off his tea. Surely this is what he _should_ be doing with his time. The senior policeman, easing gently down towards retirement, an afternoon spent gardening followed by the joys of an early night with a good book and a cup of tea. All he needs is the labrador retriever and the picture will be complete.

The vision is a sour one and he frowns at the cup. That has never been his image of himself, and it has no room for the warm uneasiness that fills him when he is around Paul. He knows he’s letting himself get away with fuzzy thinking but it’s pleasant, more than pleasant, just to let himself feel it rather than analyze it. He feels he can let himself have pleasant at this point. After all, he’s doing no-one any harm. If Paul is aware -- and God knows Foyle would like to think he is -- if he isn’t, then why on earth had he spent most of his Sunday helping Foyle reclaim his back garden? -- then he’s silently agreed to what is between them.

With a groan, Foyle pushes himself to his feet and starts getting ready for bed -- he may not be the aging inspector with bedtime reading on rose cultivation to get to, but he and Paul did spend most of the day tugging weeds and raking soil. Foyle is also a little bitterly amused to find that concentrating on _not_ touching someone has gotten no less exhausting since his youth.

* * *

The last thing he does is drop his wristwatch on the dressing table and turn off the lamp there. The only light in the room is his bedside light now; he can still see steam curling off the tea and up under the shade. It’s made the room smell nicely sweet but he doesn’t want to drink it now any more than when he made it. He’s uneasy, not quite anxious, but he keeps looking around the room as though he has forgotten something.

When he realises he’s giving the room its fourth once-over, he huffs, smiles at himself, and folds back the covers, sliding in against the pillows. By long habit, he still starts on the right side of the bed, near the inner wall of the room. He never got comfortable sleeping in the middle of the bed -- he tends to wake himself up reaching for someone who isn’t there. 

He picks up his book and finds his page, settling down under the bedclothes.

* * *

He only realises how late it’s gotten when he hears the warden go by in the narrow alley behind the garden wall. He glances over at his alarm clock automatically. Past eleven. The teacup has long since gone cold and he pushes it aside to put his book down. 

The blackout curtains make the room thickly dark when he turns the light off. He rather likes it -- there isn’t a lot of light from the street outside as a rule but if he’s feeling sleepless already anything is enough to keep him awake.

He curls over on his side, away from the windows, and tucks a hand under the pillow, trying to let his eyes drift shut naturally. He thinks back over the day, what should be done next for the garden, whether he needs to get more milk on his way home tomorrow evening. He’s still got some of the raspberry jam left so, if he gets up in time, he can make toast again for breakfast. Paul had barely eaten any this morning -- which either means he had been uncomfortable, hungover, or he doesn’t like raspberries. 

Paul is a pleasant thought -- more than pleasant and Foyle lets himself linger there. Working out in the garden with him -- even doing something as mundane as digging out dock roots and building a compost pile -- had been an exercise in steadily increasing frustration, but not one he would have given up. It is a feeling he has become familiar with, anyway. If nothing else, it wasn’t the first time it has happened to him around Paul and, if Paul chooses to keep to the _status quo,_ it won’t be the last. 

Foyle’s never been very good at this sort of thing, even with women, even with his wife. Rosalind had always teased him about the fact that she had been the one to ask him on their first evening out. With Paul -- well, it’s simply more difficult. The risks are greater. He thinks he’s been as clear as he can under the circumstances. He may never know, of course.

He knows what he would _like_ to think Paul’s behavior means -- showing him the telegram, accepting the whiskey, the Thursday night dinners -- but he also knows that he wants that meaning very badly. He wants to have that smile he thinks Paul only uses in his company _really_ to be for him alone. 

He sighs and twists under the blankets, tugging them up a little higher over his shoulders. Closing his eyes firmly doesn’t help. All it does is bring Paul more vividly before his mind’s eye, making terrible jokes about dock plants in the garden this afternoon, leaning on the handle of the rake and pointing at a far corner of the garden for some reason. Foyle honestly doesn’t remember what because all he can see is the cloud-filtered sunlight on Paul’s hair and how the loose fold of his unbuttoned shirt collar showed the line of his throat curving into his shoulder.

Of course, that isn’t all he remembers or all that makes that particular memory into something he wants so much to be his. No, there’s the appallingly bad puns, that quick upward flick of the eyes when Paul is gauging his reaction to something, the narrow curve of his wrists--- No. 

He sits up, fluffs up the pillow, and lies back down on his back, hands clasped over his chest. If he lies here and keeps thinking about Paul -- well, he can feel his body reacting already and giving in to that will simply add complication to an already complex situation. If he lets it go now, he can slide asleep with nothing more than a faint feeling of dissatisfaction or, at worst, loneliness. 

He’s used to that. 

If he doesn’t push it, doesn’t take imagining any further than he already has, then if they never do anything other than have a pleasant weekly dinner, perhaps he can convince himself that’s all he ever wanted. 

**Author's Note:**

> And a multitude of thanks to my beta readers [elizajane](http://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane) and [Kivrin](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kivrin).


End file.
